NCDC conducted a survey of International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) members last April to gain insight into educators' understanding of digital citizenship and classroom needs. Results were released this week and are summarized here.

Slideshow presentation by Chris O'Neal (ISTE) and Rob Bayuk (Microsoft). Microsoft and ISTE have joined forces to put together a series of web literacy lessons, activities, and support resources to help students develop their critical thinking skills when searching the web. You can find the teacher resources here: http://www.microsoft.com/education/teachers/guides/critical_thinking.aspx

"In partnership with Topics Education, Microsoft is sponsoring an education initiative that supports teachers' needs for addressing digital citizenship and helping students understand how to handle and share digital content and respect for an authors/students intentions for sharing creative work. Topics Education developed a comprehensive turnkey, end-to-end curriculum that provides educators with teaching resources, an experiential student curriculum and tools to teach students about creative rights so that it is meaningful and relevant to their lives and achieving their potential."

Software giant Microsoft has launched its own site - www.getgamesmart.com - to help address the problem of cyberbullying in online games, as well as assist parents in using the ESRB Rating System to determine what games their children should be playing - and what games they should not.

This research is creating a lot of buzz because it illustrates the importance of managing our online identity and those of students. Online behavior is increasingly seen as a moral compass connected to behaviors offline. Whether it is for a job application, friendship, dating, or other purposes, when people want to learn about someone, they turn to this ever-growing pool of information. Online reputation, therefore, plays an important role in personal and professional life and has become a significant factor in making hiring decisions.

Based on common sense and good judgment, cyberethics also includes obeying laws that apply to online behavior. When you practice cyberethics, you are more likely to have a safer and enjoyable Internet experience.

The researchers also discussed opinions, some of them perhaps surprising, on other notable subjects in the online social-networking space. Lawley, who has a 14-year-old son, said she is strongly against some of the restrictive methods used online to segregate adults from children in an attempt to protect kids from predators. On Second Life, for example, she can't interact with her son because he has to be in the teen grid and she has to be in the adult grid.

"So I don't learn from him about how to use technologies, and he doesn't learn from me about how to interact in a social context," she said.

Shutting down sites or trying to shut out people won't solve the problem of sexual predators, she said. "We don't talk about shutting down the Catholic Church," she said, referring to the clergy sex-abuse scandal. "Sexual deviancy isn't unique to the online world."